1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to fault detection systems, and, more specifically, to circuitry for detecting improperly connected or shorted wires in a wiring harness or the like.
2) Related Art
A typical vehicle has numerous solenoids, lamps and relays connected by a wiring harness to a vehicle controller. An incorrect voltage or incorrect load on a line can cause expensive damage to electrical and electronic components and may render the vehicle inoperable. During servicing of the vehicle or during manufacture of the harness, the connectors may by wired incorrectly so that battery voltage is applied directly to a semiconductor or the semiconductor is connected to a high current sink or ground resulting in damage to the controller or to other components in the circuit. For example, a high current pull-in coil for an engine enablement function such as the fuel pump drive sometimes is incorrectly wired to the output that is meant for a low-current hold-in coil. Fuses often are utilized in an attempt to protect the circuit, but each fuse must be durable enough for vehicle abuse and transients that occur during normal operation, and therefore the fuse may fail to open before a vital component in the circuit is damaged. Other protection methods include the use of individual series precision current sensing resistors, one at each output of the controller, with a series of operational amplifiers to provide a signal to the controller. Such circuits are relatively complex, costly and sensitive to variations in resistance. Other fault detection circuits utilize a test power supply having a voltage level well below the operating voltages to carry out a self-testing procedure and allow power up only if no low impedance paths are detected in the bus or harness. These circuits may require a special power supply and can also be costly and complex. Some circuits have a slow diagnostic time and cannot be used to provide checks during routine operation of the vehicle.
Diagnosing a system with numerous input and output lines is often tedious. Identifying a particular portion of a circuit on a circuit board or wiring harness connection can often require time-consuming references to a wiring diagram. As the number of input and output functions to and from a controller increases, the technician often finds that correlating the circuit diagram with a particular portion of the hardware is increasingly difficult.